


The Kid's Alright

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 22:48:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave's Bro reflects on some parenting choices he's made, and wonders if they were good ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kid's Alright

You were always worried that you kind of sucked at raising this kid.

You were so young when you took him in, but what else could you do? Let him become just one more orphan stuck in the system, never finding a good home? No, fuck that. Even if you weren’t the best caretaker in the world, at least you weren’t some abusive shithead.

Okay, well sometimes you were hard on him in training, but that was strictly in training. Overall you did your best to make sure he was happy and healthy.

Sometimes you’re worried your best isn’t good enough, or that your judgment is simply off. You still wonder if you made the right decisions sometimes.

Probably the best example of one of these decisions is signing him up for homeschool instead of kindergarten. You remember him always being excited to see you picking him up from preschool (he was too young to be cool and aloof back then). You thought it was because he loved you or some shit like that, but one day you got a call saying Dave got in a fight, and you discovered a different cause.

You asked him for his side of the story when he got home. The events, as you recall them, are as follows.

His class started picking on his light hair. He didn’t care, because he couldn’t help it. Some of the kids started making fun of the shades you gave him too. They said they looked stupid. Dave explained that was why he was wearing them.

They didn’t understand the irony. They thought he was wearing them because he had to, not because he wanted to. They wanted to see why. Three of the more curious kids ganged up on him and stole his shades.

There were mixed reactions to his eye color. Some thought it was cool, some thought it was scary, and some thought it was dumb like his shades.

Again, Dave didn’t care. He just wanted them back. When they kept playing their stupid keep-away game, he started kicking and punching. He basically kicked their butts.

When you heard the story, you were sort of proud that the little guy handled it so well. You were concerned though. You started calling the teacher every now and then to check up on Dave.

He didn’t get into any more fights, but he didn’t make any friends either.

You always suspected that it hurt him more than he let on. So, you decided to homeschool him so he didn’t have to deal with bullies anymore. You got him a club penguin membership to sort of make up for the lack of human contact (because hell, he can talk to people, people can talk to him back, it’s basically the same thing) and just kind of hoped for the best.

Dave never had much trouble with school. He had to go to this one-hour group thing every week with some other homeschooled kids so they could make sure he was actually being taught, and he had no trouble keeping up with his peers there.

Over the years you’ve wondered if you couldn’t have done something better. But things like his grades assured you that you weren’t doing too bad at all, and you put the doubts down to anxiety.

Hell, maybe you did do something right. He ended up making some friends on the internet. You were wary of inviting them over or anything, in case they were middle aged pervs. But even if they were middle aged pervs, they were Dave’s friends, so you let him continue talking to them.

Later you found out they actually were around Dave’s age. You got him a webcam, and he introduced you to each of them one day. They started sending birthday and Christmas gifts too, so you knew they weren’t dangerous if they had your address and still didn’t come to murder him or something.

As they all grew closer, you started to see Dave change. It started with little things. He didn’t play club penguin as much and started getting into Squiddles. When you weren’t tutoring him or starting some strife, he’d talk less about the tracks he remixed and more about John’s dumb movies that he likes unironically.

At first you wondered if there was something you were missing. Later you found out you were sort of right, but it was more like something you hadn’t realized until Dave showed you Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.

You were so glad he showed you, because it was something you never would’ve come up with. And it was absolutely horrendous in the most brilliant way.

The kid was coming into his own.

You realized he’d mostly been following in your steps. His comics were similar. His beats and his raps were similar. His shades and strife specibus were the goddamn same, but that was on you. You supposed that maybe you were worried he’d end up too much like you, and he’d sort of be a fucked up mess. Everything you did was to avoid that. You hoped you made the right choices.

When he started wearing a new pair of shades (apparently shades that actually touched Ben Stiller’s weird, sort of gaunt face) you knew the kid was alright.


End file.
